Staff Backend Engineer

Gradient Labs; Greater London; On-site; GBP 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private medical & dental insurance

25 days holiday + bank holidays (or 32

Team socials and offsites

Flexible working

Job summary

Gradient Labs is building the AI customer operations platform for financial services, combining scalable Go backend systems with production-grade infrastructure. We seek senior engineers who own end-to-end systems, prioritize reliability, observability, and rapid iteration, and are excited by autonomous AI as a platform shift.

You will influence architecture, ship resilient services, and collaborate with a team from fintech and tech backgrounds to shape the future of customer operations.

Qualifications

• Substantial tenure building production software at a fast-growing company (fintech, AI, or consumer tech).
• Proven experience owning complex, high-stakes systems end to end — accountable through observability and scale.
• Deep fluency in Go (Golang) and comfort across a modern backend stack (PostgreSQL, Temporal, GCP, Kubernetes).
• A product instinct that centers customer outcomes and informs architectural decisions.
• Senior, Staff, Principal or Distinguished level with real scope and accountability.
• Genuine excitement for autonomous AI as a platform shift and durable reliability.

Responsibilities

• Own systems from initial architectural decisions through production, scale, and maintenance.
• Build resilient, observable infrastructure that handles failures and traffic surges.
• Lead 0→1→Scale initiatives, making early architectural calls and stewarding them as they grow.
• Move fast and ship often with disciplined iteration and clear ownership.

Skills

Go

PostgreSQL

Temporal

GCP

Kubernetes

Software architecture

Tools

PostgreSQL

Temporal

GCP

Kubernetes

Job description

At Gradient Labs, we're building the AI customer operations platform for financial services.

Founded in 2023, we now work with some of the biggest names in banking and fintech. Our platform runs specialist agents, purpose-built for financial services, to eliminate manual work across customer support and back-office operations. Together, they give product and operations teams the visibility and control to trust every outcome.

We're a team of builders from companies like Monzo, Wise, Revolut and Google. If you're excited to tackle some of the hardest problems in AI and help shape the future of customer operations, we'd love to hear from you.

How you’ll make an impact

This isn't a maintenance role or a feature factory. At Gradient Labs, you will own systems that matter - from the first architectural decision through to production, scale, and everything that breaks along the way.

You'll work on the infrastructure that makes autonomous AI agents actually reliable in the real world. That means building for failure, designing for observability, and shipping with conviction - not waiting for a perfect spec that will never arrive.

• Build the OS for AI Agents - Contribute to a safe, scalable platform that lets us iterate on autonomous agent capabilities faster than anyone else. You are building the infrastructure that makes AI actually work in production.

• Ship Resilient Systems - Design and own systems that hold up under failures, retry storms, and resource starvation - with full observability baked in. Reliability is a baseline, not an aspiration.

• Take Products from 0 → 1 → Scale - Scope something from scratch, make the early architectural calls, and stay responsible for it as it grows. We build with conviction and we see things through.

• Move Fast, Ship Often - Iterate in small increments. Multiple deploys a day. Comfort with ambiguity is not optional - it is the job. The mission moves faster than the roadmap.

What you’ll bring

• Substantial tenure building production software at a fast-growing company - fintech, AI, consumer tech, or any environment where pace and stakes were both high

• Proven experience owning complex, high-stakes systems end to end - not handing off at merge, but staying accountable through observability, iteration, and scale

• Deep fluency in Go (Golang) and comfort operating across a modern backend stack (PostgreSQL, Temporal, GCP, Kubernetes)

• A product instinct that goes beyond technical elegance - you think from the customer backwards and bring that into every architectural decision

• Senior, Staff, Principal or Distinguished level in practice - someone who has operated with real scope and real accountability

• Genuine excitement for autonomous AI as a platform shift, not a trend - you want to build the infrastructure that makes agents genuinely reliable

• Strong opinions, loosely held - conviction without ego, and always willing to be wrong in pursuit of the right answer

Why join Gradient Labs?

This is a unique chance to be part of a team working with cutting-edge technology to reshape how businesses will operate in the future. Over the next 10 years, every company will need to embrace AI-powered operations to stay competitive, and this role puts you right in the middle of that transformation.

You’ll tackle challenging and new problems, work with some of the most exciting brands across different industries, and be surrounded by a passionate, smart team that’s driven to build something groundbreaking.

Benefits & Logistics

• We’re still at early stages of building out our compensation bandings, whilst we continue to shape this, we’re open to chatting with people who have a range of salary requirements

  • Our compensation package has two key components - base salary & meaningful equity

• Private medical & dental insurance

• 25 days holiday + bank holidays (or bank holiday opt out for 32 days holiday)

• Team socials and offsites

• Flexible working - we have an office in central London and a hybrid working approach. This role is open to London based or remote in the UK folks (ideally you'd be able to come into the office once per week)

The Interview Process

• 30 mins Talent Screen with our Founding People & Talent

• 1hr Hiring Manager interview with our CTO, Neal Lathia

• Take Home Task

• Take Home Task Deep Dive interview with 2 of our Backend Engineers

• Final Product Interview